Forum / Salon challenges DFW's view of irony

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Apr 28, 06:24pm

  http://www.salon.com/2014/04/27/what_david_foster_wallace_got_wrong_about_irony_our_culture_doesnt_have_nearly_enough_of_it/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow#

  My comment

  "I once taught applied rhetoric to freshmen following a method developed by Dr. George Trail, who gave the lectures. Irony is written and sarcasm is spoken. It gave me trouble then and now to view irony as "the opposite of what is meant." It seems there are multiple possibilities rather than one of two or two of two. I visited the Wikipedia entry for Irony, and it is useful to read. There are many devices in applied rhetoric, and irony is but one of those. Sincerity seems to be "the opposite" of irony. Is that ironic? I checked a few sources and discovered that David Foster Wallace's "I Unibus Pluram" first appeared in Review of Contemporary Fiction B(2) before Little, Brown and Co. published it as part of his first essay collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, four years later. I downloaded the essay using the link given above. I am temporarily relying on dial-up access, which may account for why I see only the first three of 44 pages of the essay whose subject is not only TV but fiction. It seems very important to emphasize that fiction is Wallace's context in exploring irony. I hope to be able to read the rest of the essay when possible. Wallace refers to American fiction writers he knows generally and not otherwise by name; only Louise Erdrich's household, he imagines, might be described as normal. The essay was published some years before the suicide of Louise Erdrich's writer husband and father of their children, Michael Dorris in 1997; of course, David Foster Wallace himself committed suicide in 2008. I imagine there are 30 reasons (not an exact number but an indication of the complexity of a writer's decision to end his or her life) rather than one of two or two of two reasons. I noted that the essay linked above carries two copyrights, one by ProQuest Information and Learning Company in 2006 and another without date by Center for Book Culture, Inc. Incidentally, on Easter the L.A. Times carried a story about the Estate of David Foster Wallace's attempt to stop production of a film about the author and the low impact of their request. The L.A. Times story on Easter (a week ago) notes this Salon interview/article titled against David Foster Wallace's essay published just yesterday." ~Ann Bogle

• 
  David Ackley

  Apr 28, 09:46pm

  The classic defining circumstance of irony--at least tragic irony--occurs in Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex," when Oedipus takes it upon himself to discover the culprit behind the curse that the gods have placed on the city he rules,only to find in the end( spoiler alert) that he himself is responsible.

• You must log in to reply to this thread.